Friday, June 3, 2011

Louis Ferrante, now 42, eventually spent more than eight years in prison.

Who woulda figured that hijacking trucks, pulling heists and running a loanshark operation for the Mob was actually the sign of a good business manager?
Louis Ferrante certainly didn't - at least not at first during his bad old days, when the Queens native, barely in his 20s, was the leader of a crew that raked in millions of ill-gotten dollars for the Gambino crime family.
Ferrante, now 42, eventually spent more than eight years in prison - where he decided to go straight and became a writer.
His new book, "Mob Rules: What the Mafia Can Teach the Legitimate Businessman" (Portfolio/Penguin), which hit shelves yesterday, offers a series of worthwhile, sometimes humorous tips on how to succeed in business through techniques used by members of what he calls "the longest-running corporation in history" - aka the Mafia.
The Daily News recently had a sitdown with Ferrante:Q Your book features 88 business lessons taken from real-life mob scenarios, plus familiar Mafia history going way back. Can what happens in "the life" really be applied to the legitimate business world?A It really is like working for a big, organized business every day. No matter what, these guys are really good businessmen. During a sitdown, if there's a beef and you're not prepared, the bosses will make mincemeat out of you. Just like in a real company.Q You write that some of the biggest gangsters, like John Gotti, would have made good businessmen had they been legit.A Yeah. Some of the most successful guys could slide into a real company and be CEO if they just had the educational background. I won't name names, but there's one guy I worked for who was real sharp and actually dumbed it down for the bosses so he wouldn't offend anybody. Guys like Gotti were real tough, but they had intellect, and that's how they got to be who they were.Q When did you realize you possessed your own skill-set as a manager?
A When I was running a crew of eight guys in their 40s when I was only in my 20s. When the bosses needed a truck hijacked, they came to us. We were the go-to guys for that stuff. I never went to college, but I had an instinct for knowing how to balance personalities, diffuse a beef, motivate these guys to pull a heist, and delegate jobs during a robbery so that we were like a well-oiled machine.